Kavanaugh Battle Shows the Power, and the Limits, of #MeToo Movement

One of the first stories Gretchen Carlson covered in her career as a television journalist was the 1991 Senate hearing where Anita Hill sat alone at the witness table and testified that Clarence Thomas had sexually harassed her. Then, Ms. Carlson said, “I was promptly harassed on the job.”

But it wasn’t for another 25 years that she would file her explosive sexual harassment lawsuit against Roger Ailes, the powerful founding chairman of Fox News. Ms. Carlson, too, was largely alone; it was July 2016, more than a year before the #MeToo movement would erupt, and even some female colleagues at her own network questioned her actions. While she won a $20 million settlement, Mr. Ailes left the network with a $40 million payout.

As she watched this week as another Supreme Court nominee faced sexual assault allegations — this time from a woman supported by sexual assault survivors and female senators sitting behind her — Ms. Carlson could not help seeing the effects of the revolution she helped start, and its limits...